the ones on the bottom, the one on the bottom about direct line of sight, placement so that it's less prone to getting hit, those are more should. that's something that we should do, it's not a shall condition. but obviously we want to do all those at the same time as well. the technical placement criteria. other considerations, we can't be near driveways. can't be in driveways either. we try to avoid bus zones. we try to avoid entrances to businesses, doorways, hotels, apartment buildings. and we also try to avoid windows and frontages. and then of course we also try to consider how much volume of pedestrians are going on that particular sidewalk. and then each hotel is considered an sfm subject to dpw permitting conditions. so, what we've done in every location where we had to install a new controller or

relocate one, we follow the smf procedures, posting a public hearing if somebody issues a concern. and then we secure the preliminary permits from dpw. i wanted to address one of the issues about placement of controllers on the near side of intersections. like i said, sometimes it's just really difficult for us to try to place them on the far side. all things being equal, we would want that controller to be on the far side of the intersection so we have maximum visibility for pedestrians. but sometimes with all the constraints that we're faced against with that near side location somehow that only works. and i'd be happy to follow-up with andres where there seems to be an issue [speaker not understood]. there is no parking for the lane, it's right up against the sidewalk. we can take a look at what we can do with that controller. thank you. >> great, thank you very much. colleagues, no questions? terrific. i want to thank all the city staff for those very

informative presentations. and as with most things, i think what this makes clear these are not complicated issues, trying to ballet lot of different needs with some of the important services that street furniture provides and critical needs in the community, but also wanting to just be strategic in how we, how we decide to place things on the sidewalks given limited sidewalk space for pedestrian flow. so, colleagues, if there are no additional comments or questions, we will open it up to public comment. public comment will be two minutes. you'll hear a soft bell when you have 30 seconds left and a louder bell when the two minutes has expired. , and so, i will call the names that i have. and i apologize in advance if i mispronounce your name. alex popovich. bob hutchinson.

kevin wong. drew howard, alex walker. mylo [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. marlene butler. and andrea aiello. you can just line up. you don't have to speak in the order that i called you. let's line up along the wall on the left. supervisors, my name is alex, president of san francisco bay distributors, inc., and publication including 11 [speaker not understood] graffiti, [speaker not understood]. i'm here today to offer your committee information data obtained from 30 years of distribution street publications abating graffiti from newsracks. [speaker not understood] and been serving there for over one year. graffiti is a team partner with

community clean team volunteering to clean newsracks. i'm the senior [speaker not understood] serving since the inception 30 years ago. [speaker not understood]. i'm proud to say that you have my [speaker not understood]. i was the chairman of the foreman's newsrack [speaker not understood]. here are my suggestions. approximately 250 pedestals available for installation, i have identified over 200 location that would totally complete the ad zone jackson street to king street, and commuting corridors [speaker not understood] within the non-ad zones. i thought i had three minutes. so i'm going to skip. i find it imperative to alert you that the proposal eliminating freestanding newsracks outside of program

zones would put most small publishers out of business. it can cost in excess of $250 per unit. this would create a monopoly from the larger publicationses without their respective publishers seeking a course of action. this would negatively impact local small businesses and public at large that depends on the low advertising rates offered by the smaller publications. the solution to proactive maintenance of abatement from the publishers of free standing newsracks lies in [speaker not understood] in order to maintain the newsrack certificates. thank you very much. i have my survey in hard copy i'd like to submit to the supervisors. >> great, thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is kevin fong. i'm the circulation manager for the san francisco advertiser paper. i received an e-mail from the

city of dpw regarding elimination of the freestanding racks to keep our subway -- sidewalks clean from clutter. i'm very shocked to hear committees consider eliminating newspapers street racks. we have been in business over 43 years and we have held many small business to grow. ~ helped they are like us, they hire local employees, pay city payroll taxes, support local business and pay property tax. we are a weekly newspaper. our readers use our paper to save money, retail, [speaker not understood]. by eliminating freestanding racks on the street, that will negatively impact the larger number of local small business and [speaker not understood] largely depend on the small advertising rate of these small publications. the suggestion here is even though the creation is not the

best choice, but that's probably the best solution today. our street racks look much cleaner than a few years ago. i hope we can continue to go along with the clearchannel and the racks looks much better. thanks. >> thank you very much. next speaker. and i have one additional card, ronald austin. [speaker not understood]. good afternoon, supervisors, chairman, president. chairman, thank you so much for calling this meeting. through the visual wasv that we've seen and walking around the district i'm sure know and face the difficulties of being a pedestrian [speaker not understood] in san francisco. and the key elements that you've called for here prioritizing services, strategic placement, [speaker not understood] communication and consolidation is really going to be critical and help us move forward. san francisco has tremendous guidelines and goals and standards that we hold ourselves accountable to.

accountability is i think something we can work better on. in talking about the interdepartmental communication, i know we're focused on that here and now, but i also want to encourage you to and the process that includes community input. dpw's order around smf is the key memo that then director ed lee signed. really outlines what this process looks like and, supervisor kim, i know you asked or if it was president chiu asked for -- asked for guidelines on how is this working in your districts. two weeks ago we hosted a community meeting around the utility boxes specifically. we had more than 50 paraer advertise pants from all over the city who brought to us their problems and concerns as they're now dealing with that permitting process, how it affects them in their districts. and there are some improvements and i think we can make to the process. for example, notices are only [speaker not understood] can be really a problem. so, in looking at the permitting process, but also on

the outside looking at the enforcement of our own guidelines, how do we enforce those, how can we do a better job of it. right now we're seeing the city failing in its shall, but how are we holding private companies to the same standards? so, thank you for beginning this conversation. i know it's going to be a long one, but san francisco beautiful, we're happy to be a participant and work with the community. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is drew howard. i'm a native san franciscan and actually formerly a staff member of sfmta but i am now retired and i am speaking to the issue at hand. it is a very important one and it's one that should be looked at in terms of requirements, needs, and desires. and i know that a lot of times the desires have a tendency of

overriding the real requirements. specifically, in terms of our operators and their rest room needs, we run muni service 24 hours a day in a lot of businesses. and indeed speaking to supervisor chiu's comment about businesses, my understanding is they've been trying to look for businesses. but a lot of times the terminals are really on the perimeter of the city and they're not the places where there are the most number of businesses nor businesses that are open all those hours. for our operators, to have to stop mid route foci an inconvenience to the riding public. and if i'm on a bus and all of a sudden we're stopping and i was recently -- the city had their annual softball tournament over at marina -- at the -- down by the marina. there was a 30 stockton that came along there and stopped specifically at the field house

in order to -- the operator use the rest room. that service was interrupted for that period of time. if that operator was able to go to the end of the line of the terminal and have something there, that would be much more appropriate and much more in keeping with the needs of the riding public. i encourage you to do as much as you can, but really look for the real requirements. thank you. >> thank you. congratulations on your retirement. next speaker. good afternoon. i'm elena butler. i live on douglass street in noe valley. can you hear me? >> speak into the microphone so we can hear you better. >> is that better? thank you. i'm here to speak to the at&t utility box issue. i'd like to speak specifically to the process and actually i want to refer to -- first to an article that was in the

newspaper on july 20th, 2011, when the board took the 6 to 5 vote. at&t -- thanks. at&t at that time agreed to conduct robust community outreach and also said that if there were significant community opposition, they could do plans for specific sites. i'd like to point out that the process is not working that way. i was -- i found a notice on the utility pole in front of my house. when i returned from vacation announcing that at&t was planning to locate one of those boxes a few feet from my property line, and i had three days in which to object. i got a few members of my neighborhood to object and the next? step was at&t calling the meeting for those of us who did object we got e-mail notices saying they would be there tuesday, last thus at 10 o'clock.

~ i learned at that meeting this is how the so-called process works. they originally plan to locate a box at 24th and douglass which is a block and a half away, about 300 feet, a little more than 300 feet away. the neighbors in that case objected to that box being put there. and according to the at&t representatives, they then -- the neighbors and the at&t reps began marching up douglass street and they got to maiello indication and said, why don't you put it there instead and at&t said, okay. ~ my location i'm questioning a process where neighbors are being pitted against neighbors. and neighbors don't know my immediate neighbors. it's like this. [inaudible] >> thank you. thank you, and if you haven't connected with my office, please do so.

we try to track these to see if we can be helpful. it's right around the corner. all right, we'll do it. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon. my name is thomas sober. i live at 2200 trick ham street. i'm here to represent the sunset residents association. we are here to address the same situation with the at&t utility boxes. unlike bus stops or newsracks, which have a pedestrian purpose, the at&t utility boxes have no pedestrian purpose. this is a very complicated problem. i'm speaking from the perspective that i am a licensed architect for the past four decades practicing in the city, and i want to reiterate that the process has been just really very difficult on everyone for us.

i have volunteered my services of my firm to develop a plan that is based on locating these boxes on private property. we have met with at&t. we have substantiated that they are technically feasible and they are economically feasible from the perspective of at&t affording -- to be able to locate these boxes on private property. however, without my professional experience, we would not have been able to make that argument. so, i want to encourage this group to engage the neighborhoods and also professionals to derive a community-based solution so that we are not kicking the can up the street, as marlene just mentioned, and that we come to a consensus of how this process will unfold. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors.

alex walker, san francisco beautiful. want to thank first chairman wiener for calling this meeting and thank you all for your time today. i walk 18th and castro all the time and that kiosk is a nightmare with traffic. we at beautiful are happy to be in the community with all these issues and especially when it comes to the permitting and enforcement on having really the eyes and ears on the street [speaker not understood]. we walked down market street from castro, from castro to montgomery which is where our office is located there. we found that 48% of the clearchannel newsracks were empty. we definitely appreciate having these newsracks myriad freestanding newsracks consolidated, but if there is not the coverage there, then we really have to kind of have an audit and say can we redistribute, eliminate? on the overhead i'm going to

try to improvise some visual aids here, pictures on the overhead [speaker not understood]. sfgtv? perfect. it's kind of hard to see here. you can see here, this is near the e-trade building is behind -- e-trade at market and sanford. you can see one rack here that is not being used and is a -- stickers all over the place. you see a lot of redundancy. you'll see a frame here which is dpw, which needs to be we need to work on regulating those more chollasly. another sf examiner, freestanding kiosk blocking that air why there. this is [speaker not understood] going to the bart entrance there. very busy, very busy intersection. enter you can see there's lots of emptiness, redundancy with

those. ~ finally, last picture here, you can see there is a lot that needs to be kind of regulated when it comes to freestanding versus these racks. >> thank you very much. next speaker. thank you. i'm milo hankey. thank you, supervisor wiener, [speaker not understood]. it's a great step. clutter street furniture, there is san francisco beautiful looks forward to participating in any opportunities to advance permitting enforcement. we spent a considerable amount of time in putting together order number 175 566. this is the memo that ed lee signed in 2005 regarding surface mounted utilities. we don't simply ask, but we insist that we become

participants rather than observers in a long overdue meeting for technical review. this memo calls for an annual review of technologies that would reveal optimal technologies for undergrounding or reducing the size of these cabinets. so, we'll be asking to be a part of that. the other part of this, too, is supervisor kim brought up a question before regarding at&t's efforts to locate their utilities on private property. my understanding is that it's a pretext or pretense of an offer. it goes this way out of dallas. $8,000 for permanent easement, that's the only way at&t says it will do business. no owner really wants to inflict that kind of permanent damage to their property. so, it might be -- i'll throw out this idea. maybe it's the city's role to do some price finding here and send to all the taxpayers in the city and offer to enter into a city managed registry,

property owners who potentially be interested in locating [speaker not understood] comcast or the city itself. let's find out what the true cost is of putting this on private property. that is a key tenant of this memo drafted and signed in 2005. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, ms. aiello. good afternoon, supervisors. thank you so much for having this conversation, supervisor wiener. i think it's going to take a long time but it's way overdue. i'd like to say my name is andrea aiello [speaker not understood] and we've been working with dpw for over a year now in trying to consolidate those newspaper racks. there are so many empty newspaper racks in the castro/upper market district and we've been working very closely with the city. we did get one removed and i can't tell you how many likes

on our facebook page when we got when it was taken out and personal thank yous. so, i think people in the neighborhood really understand that these -- this kind of furniture is not being used in the way that it was intended. it's mostly advertisements. i'd also like to say na we worked very closely with j.c. de coe with the -- i forget what they're called -- the kiosks and the bathrooms. they taken credible care of the bathrooms. they're really, really great. they're wonderful in helping us to -- we utilize those kiosks. the fact is we have an extra kiosk now in the neighborhood with the sidewalk widening project and nobody knows what to do with it. we can't find a place to put it. there's just too many. and they do have a ceiling -- they do have -- the ceiling is probably 8 feet. and the other thing i'd like to -- one gentleman earlier mentioned that those freestanding newsracks are better. we still have some freestanding

newsracks at guerrero and church. i called and talked to the private sector and also the city about cleaning up those and it just doesn't happen. you know, i'm not sure what he was talking about, but i think the ped mounts are better. there are just way too many. thanks very much for start thing conversation. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon, land use and supervisors. i hope you had a nice 4th of july. ♪ and i'm proud to be a city citizen where at least i know i'm free and [speaker not understood] and clean it up and the bay and all the sea and i gladly stand up next to you and to clean it up today 'cause there ain't no doubt i love this city land

and the city by the bay-hay-hay and i'm proud to be a city citizen where at least i know where free and i won't forget and i'll clean it up clean it up oh, won't you please and i gladly stand up next to you and to clean it it up today and clean it up, the bay because i love this land god bless the city bay hay clean it up today >> next speaker, please. hello, ron austin local transport [speaker not understood] represent the 2,500 transit operators that drive

the trolleys, buses, trains within the city. i find it very interesting it was several months ago where we spoke to the board in a prop k meeting in the concerns for funding for the rest rooms for our members of our local union. and the one thing that i find very disturbing is that the sudden reference to, let's say alleged fiscal responsibility in funding rest rooms for our members. first of all, we refuse to allow to be treated as second class citizens in regards to using a rest room while serving the public in the city and county of san francisco. the operator rest rooms that ms. cavanagh first rolled out which was in the phase 1 plan, there are no businesses secondary to the southeastern corridor of the city which was formerly pretty much all industrial. there are no businesses. there are no restaurants. there are nowhere for our people to go or for the agency to get licenses for our people to use the rest room. that's why it's imperative at least at this first phase that

we get cooperation from this board that we can see that plan to its fruition and we can look at other options later on down the line since there was an issue with a number 36 in total that we can still use a two-pronged approach, the agency going after licenses with private businesses and also where we don't have that option, we have the option to place these prefab units. this is a very important issue. it's a health and safety issue. and i'll have to ask, if there's a concern about a rest room costing $175,000, how much does it cost for the city in workers' compensation costs for renal failure of an operator? and i think it's a lot more than $175,000. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. my name is mary beth [speaker not understood]. i live in [speaker not understood] supervisor wiener's district. i came here for the consideration of the urban ag

legislation because i'm a community garden coordinator. but i felt compelled to rile forfeit my speaking on that issue to address this one and with all due respect to the previous speaker, i want to comment on this to be the jaw dropping cost of providing rest room, individual rest room facilities for muni workers. i'm a muni rider. i took muni here. here's my clipper card. so, -- and i don't denied the need for facilities, but i simply can't fathom that this is a credible use of very scarce public dollars. and further investigation, just looking at the list there, i know there is a 24-hour walgreens at 24th and potrero avenue. san francisco general is right there, which is a very dignified institution [speaker not understood]. based on my calculationn'tv the entire budget for the city-wide

urban agriculture program which is about $100,000 is roughly half a toilet. and i find that outrageous. and it seems to me that it can't -- the -- even though this is only one piece of a very complex piece of legislation and a complex issue, it's not possibly be permitted to go forward as it was stated unless represented to this body today. thank you. >> thank you. and you can speak on both items. you don't forfeit speaking on the other. okay. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> again, i want to thank the departments and also members of the public for coming out today. i think this is going to be an ongoing issue in terms of the management of our sidewalks. and i look forward to working collaboratively with everyone to find a good solution and a good path forward. so, colleagues, president chiu. >> i want to take a moment first and thank our chairman of this committee for holding this

hearing. these issues impact all of our districts, certainly in my district which has the most density of any of our districts, our sidewalks are incredibly cluttered. and i think anything we can do to alleviate that is important in all these different areas. i want to respond a bit about the issue of prefab bathrooms. i want to make it clear, i don't think there is anyone saying our muni drivers should not have access to bathrooms. that is absolutely -- we all understand that importance. but is there a better way of doing this is the set of questions we're asking. and i have wondered if you were to offer the public or businesses or other entities that have bathrooms 5 to $10,000 a year to assist with this task, is there a different way to do it. that's really where i was going with that question. to that end, i would want to understand once these initial six locationses are in progress, to really understand

what the plan is for the remaining 38. we were talking about a dollar figure, that's about $6 million for what we're trying to achieve here. and i just wonder if there is a different way to do that. with that being said, i appreciate all the hard thinking that's gone into this thus far and look forward to carrying on that conversation. >> thank you. supervisor kim. >> i also want to thank the chair and our department for putting this hearing together. i think it was incredibly helpful for us to have an informational discussion on this item. it's certainly i think something that continues to be of concern for our residents and constituents. particularly, i think as we continue on growth and development in our city, we want to make sure that we are creating pedestrian pathways that are safe and are able to kind of serve the capacity of our increasing neighborhoods. i'm particularly interested in two issues, one was the issue i brought up with how we can have bus shelters in neighborhoods like the tenderloin where we

are getting incredible amounts of complaints about the shelters being used, not as a resting place for our residents, but really as a space for people to either use drugs or to kind of hinder sight lines of police officers for criminal -- low-level criminal activity. i think that's one area of concern for us. we would really love to explore with mta creative ideas around that so that the only solution isn't getting rid of the bus shelter. the second issue that is of interest to me although i didn't talk too much about it is of course the street furniture, but particularly on the sidewalks that lead to our open space such as our parks and our schools. so, i would be -- i will be reaching out to our department about some of the proposed street furniture on those blocks. thank you. >> thank you very much. so, if there are no additional comments or questions, can we have a motion to file this hearing? >> so moved. >> can we do that without ob